Iverson's career stats

[Crow]

In history of league, titlewinner was led by guy over 32% usage about ten times,well less than 20% of time (over a hundred guys tried) and MJ had the majority of these. Over 33.5, just 5 (over 50 tried).

Iverson went 0 for 5 in over 32% usage playoffs. Malone 0-6. Bryant 2 for 7. McGrady 0-6, Anthony 0-5, Shaq 0-5 in those years. Wilkins 0-4. James 1-4 in those years.

Jordan 6 for 11. Surely the great D helped.

Only once in league history did titlewinner have 2 over 30% usage (2001 Lakers) but that is the design that Presti,Brooks, Durant and Westbrook went with last season and seem likely to continue to try foreseeable future.

[Mike G]

Brent Barry
Jason Collins
Gustavo Ayon
Vladimir Radmanovic
Jermaine O'Neal
Allen Iverson
Theo Ratliff
Darius Songaila
Steve Francis
Jameer Nelson
Elton Brand

Those are his peers and it doesn't look like great company to me.

It doesn't look like a great stat to me.

[Crow]

Championships are a pretty good "stat" for lead guys in the "great" discussion. Not sole or definitive, but pretty good.

[permaximum]

Per 36, his highest PPG is 26.7.

Actually it's 27.6 per 36 in 05-06 for Iverson. 26.7 in 00-01.

Durability is a big factor imo. In the end there are 48 minutes in the game. Would you take Iverson who can play for 48 minutes and has RAPM values such as 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.2 or Ginobili who can play for 27 minutes along with a RAPM value between 7 and 3.5? Can you give a quick answer? I can't, even if I only take RAPM into account, the same RAPM which doesn't like Iverson but loves Ginobili.

Boxscore based metrics like Iverson, RAPM not much, WS/48 hates him. So, I think some "advanced" metrics should start to include something simple as "ability to still play instead of an average player" kind of factor. Actually there are those metrics and perhaps we should start to use them to rank players instead of something that ends with /48 or /36... Perhaps, we should adjust RAPM with that in mind too

[Mike G]

Something like Wins Above Replacement level?

[schtevie]

Now that we have brought Manu Ginobili into the discussion as a point of comparison, perhaps this should morph into a "Gregg Popovich career stats" conversation? No player, except for when he is injured or asks to not play or is reasonably expected to have an "excess injury risk" if he does expand his playing time, is ultimately responsible for his time on the court. If "the Spurs" chose not to play a superior player despite his availability, that is an indictment of them, not him. Just because someone is a coach in the NBA doesn't mean that one should assume that he operates with an accurate appraisal of player values. Heresy, no?

Yes, it is reasonable to consider minutes played (relative to the quality of the available substitute) but if the purpose, in the instance, is somehow to elevate AI to the uppermost ranks of players, that simply ain't gonna fly.

Can we please retire this one?

[permaximum]

One would wonder... who's more foolish the fool or the fool who follows him? Popovich or Spurs? Surprisingly they won 5 championships in the last 15 years. 33.3% win rate should be good enough in a league with 29-30 teams. I'm sorry but I think i will trust Pop on this matter after Ginobili's minute-wise constant 12 years in NBA.

Also, who decides which metric we should use to rank the best players? Why it's WS/48 which can produce situations like +2.3 wins (per game you know) or RAPM (where Durant isn't the half player of Nick Collison) or something like WAR where someone decides to value assists as 0.75 point because it sounds right. Or PER? Or other advanced statistical metrics with "estimations"?

Back to the topic, most of the players' efficiency drops terribly if they play longer than their body allows. And I believe in NBA coaches on that one especially if a given player is considered great but limited to certain minutes in his entire basketball life. So I try to value that player's contribution to a 48-minute game with that in my mind first.

[schtevie]

Ah. Trust. It is the most minor point that it's been 16, not 15, years since the Spurs' first championship. But the more substantive point is: given the endowment of talent that Pops inherited (or was subsequently instrumental in acquiring) is the cumulative record of his teams above, equal to, or below average? I submit that the answer is not "above" and that the actual vs. potential contributions of Ginobili are part and parcel of this.

[permaximum]

Whatever... You will never see Ginobili or top RAPM, WS/48 etc. guys (or anyone in this decade) go 21/32 in a playoff game (between 4th-5th) for 55 (20 in the fourth) along with 8 assists and make his team win a very close game with 98-90.

Scoring 56.2% of a team's points in a playoff game along with 21/32 shooting and 8 assists should definetely qualify as the best playoff performance. Here's a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Na ... ayoff_game

Not surprisingly this list doesn't contain post-Jordan era's big superstars. However, Iverson has 55 , 54, 52 (98-90 66% fg, 97-92 conf semis 54% fg, conf semis 121-88 66% fg). A player that ranked #180 or whatever in RAPM or WS did these stuff... Kobe (after overtime), Nowitzki and Carter barely made the list with one 50 each (Ray Allen had 51 too with triple OT). And there's no one else.

The list also means there's a lack of ability in today's players to take over in a playoff game where it matters. And it seperates the greatests from metric performers.


Yes, I rank prime Iverson second behind prime Jordan.

[bondom343]

If anyone is familiar w/ simple in/out, ElGee from realgm did a post on it a little while back, and Iverson was in his data as well.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 1600342008

Peak his team had an SRS in of 2.3, out of -.6. He ranked around 75th in WOWY score (I don't know/remember how the score was calculated offhand), but the thread is on the stats board over there too:
http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtop ... &t=1333570

Good read if interested, but it seems AI definitely had solid impact.

[permaximum]

Checked the thread. WOWY sounds valid and somewhat reliable. Would be a lot more interested if there was playoff data too.

BTW I wanted to check something and here's the result. Between the years of 1999 and 2005 (Philly playoff years), Iverson played 62 playoff games and scored 40+ in 10 games (9-1 record. Ironically he scored 26 in the 4th in that sole lose). Only Jordan surpasses the rate. He has 38 in 179 (26-12 record) with Bulls. Except these two, no other player in NBA history comes close to these rates in playoffs. Jordan also has 8 50+ games with 6-2 record. Iverson's right behind him with 3 50+games and 3-0 record.

What I'm trying to say is this is what "greatness" is about. Winning the games that matter without getting much help.

This is all I'm saying about this topic. You can continue to adress Nick Collison, Conley, Beverley, Amir Johnson, etc. as the best players of NBA after the greatest of all time "LeBron". I respect that opinion too...

[xkonk]

Following on JE's list of Iverson's +/- and NET, and the request for playoff numbers, you can just go back to bball-reference (http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... sal01.html, playoff play-by-play). Iverson's career playoff +/- is -3.3, and his career playoff NET is -9.7. Compare to his career regular season numbers of 1.7/3.9. The NET value was positive only twice, both in 5-game first round eliminations (Spurs 2007 and Celtics 2002).

Since this whole thread started because Iverson was name-checked, here are the +/- and NET values for some other guys mentioned in the thread.
Iverson (repeating above): 1.7/3.9 regular season, -3.3/-9.7 playoffs
Ginobili: 10.6/7.5, 8.3/11.2
Jordan (only last two seasons): -0.2/3.0, no playoffs
LeBron: 7.1/11.2, 5.3/8.1
Durant: 2.7/2.4, 1.7/4.8
Kobe: 5.2/6.7, 3.8/8.3
Shaq: 6.9/7.7, 4.8/8.6

So of these guys at least, Iverson played for the worst teams overall (barring Jordan's Wizards), had the lowest regular season NET aside from Durant (held down by his first two seasons), and is the only one to not improve his NET from regular season to playoffs (aside from LeBron, who has a ridiculous regular season NET). In fact, it drops over 13 points. That's mostly due to a disastrous 04-05 playoff campaign, but even in his Finals year his playoff NET was -5.2 after a regular season at +4.1.

[permaximum]

@xkonk

Iverson's +/- playoff numbers suffer hugely because especially in Philly he played almost 95% of available minutes in playoffs. He usually came out for a min or two in a game and that small sample size taken from a game skews +/- numbers. The only playoff game 76ers played without him in a series that they eventually won, was a lose. But that doesn't mean anything at all like his playoff +/- numbers.

[schtevie]

What I'm trying to say is this is what "greatness" is about. Winning the games that matter without getting much help.

I suppose that one is allowed to come up with one's own personal definition of basketball "greatness". But this one, it seems to me, comes about as close to being incorrect as an opinion can be.

The notion that games can be won by individuals without "getting much help" (on offense) is way too lazy a turn of phrase. Might it imply that Iverson's true offensive +/- ratings for identified play-off games was +100 or +50 or whatever?

Yes, the ability to create one's own shot is a valuable skill, but it is just one skill amongst all the others and one that has a particular weight in an overall assessment of value. And greatness reflects exceptional performance overall. (Or should we talk next about the greatness of Carmelo Anthony?)

And, finally, volume scoring (in playoff games or otherwise) is generally more indicative of bad decision-making on the margin than anything else.

[permaximum]

@schtevie

Nope. It simply implies that Iverson scored 56.2% of his team's points with 66% FG and 75% TS in a really close playoff game while dishing out 8 assists also. And he did this kind of stuff more than a few times in playoffs. For example in an another playoff game he scored 52 with 66% FG and 79% TS. I can continue with other examples. However, these kind of examples are rare in NBA playoff history.

BTW, I thought volume scoring is a thing for ineffecient guys. Iverson is not inefficient. I can agree that he's inconsistent with his shoothing.